A Mafan

Wan shi Sui yi!

My opinion on language is that you have two main parts: Grammar, and vocabulary. If you want a building, you have to have the right materials, and good quality materials. But a pile of good quality materials doesn't make a building. So the materials (vocabulary) have to be put together in the right order, the right structure (grammar). I'd say you need to start with learning grammar basics. Learn the three "de" markers (的 地 得) and the different ways they are used. (possessive, adjective marker, adverb marker). Learn the 把 pattern. Understand how a Chinese sentence breaks out. They don't put separations in, so you have to learn to read them: a single character is usually a function word or pronoun; a two character combination is the most common way you see verbs, objects, nouns; a three character combination is usually proper name; a four character combination is usually a phrase or saying (often idiomatic, chengyu 成语） But don't bother studying chengyus until after you are already fluent in Chinese. Most people don't use them that often in daily life. You learn that structure while learning your basic, survival level Chinese. I think the best way to do that is to read children's books, or something equally simple in natural language. Once you have that down, you start adding in vocabulary. learn all the nouns and verbs you can, and start using them in simple SVO sentences. Sure, Chinese has some more complicated sentences, but most of their complexity is in adding descriptors. The hardest thing in a long Chinese sentence is figuring out which subject or object is being modified...it can change the meaning of the sentence. But you must, must, must, must, must (I can't emphasize this enough) find a way to have fun studying Chinese. If it feels like work, you'll never get anywhere. Find some cartoons that you can enjoy. Find a television serial you think is interesting. Get into Chinese music. I can guarantee that they have enough variations of music that you can find just about any style you want. So maybe there aren't many songs that would classify as "ska", but I know of at least a dozen reggae style songs, and more than 50 jazz songs, bunches of blues, etc. These different songs are scattered across more than a dozen different singers...in the Chinese pop culture, the emphasis is on the person, not the style. That frees singers to do all sorts of different styles on one disc, and they do. But I digress. The point is, you can get youtube videos of all sorts of songs and use the pause button to look up every character. Then watch/listen/sing along once a day. You will be learning Chinese, but in a fun way! Or watch the television serial, and pause and look up every character, work on it until you understand at least 80%. The first episode may take you a week or more to get through. But the characters will use the same phrases, vocabulary and grammar. The 2nd episode will go faster, and each episode will get faster as you go, to the point that by the time you get to the last 3-4, you will be able to watch at near full speed. Maybe. It depends on your progress. But then whatever you do, make flashcards. And when you find yourself with nothing to do (waiting for an appointment, using the bathroom, waiting on your wife/husband to get ready to go, etc), pull out the flashcards and run through them. You don't have to test yourself hard, just glance at the Chinese character, then turn it over and look at the pronunciation and English. The point is repetition. Mindless repetition will get it into your head faster/easier than racking your brains to memorize it. Seriously. Learn how to write characters, just until you learn stroke order so that you can look characters up in a dictionary. They use the first stroke or the main radical to classify their characters in a dictionary, and you must understand that to look characters up. And you must look characters up to understand them. Finally, don't worry so much about tones. Do your best to memorize, learn, and use them. But they are one element of pronunciation. Some chinese have a problem with th and s. So they may get "sink" and "think" pronounced wrong. But context lets you know which one they mean. Nearly every Chinese pronounces "Thanksgiving" as "Sexgiving". Do you have any problem understanding what they really mean? No. Chinese without the tones is the same way. Context will help avoid 80% of the problem. But you must listen to how they speak, you must try to model their flow, and inflection. Even if you know the tones, if you use English inflection to emphasize a character, you will sound funny to them (and get teased). Any questions or problems? I am always willing to be a language mentor. I have a few websites that I can share that help people with study.

The Chinese teachers I've had call live-in Chinese teacher a "long-haired dictionary"... chang toufa cidian 长头发词典

The gender/power imbalance already exists. The impact is already showing. But what seems to be happening the most is only the alpha males end up with a wife and multiple girlfriends. the 1% vs the 99% in sexual politics. Men are also turning to foreign brides from the even poorer nations like Burma, North Korea, and Vietnam. And where the imbalance seems to be worst (in the countryside), they are actually purchasing kidnapped/forced brides in greater numbers. David, the way I understand it, women are raising their standards from a "sour grapes" viewpoint. If their standards are so high no man can measure up, then it isn't that no man actually wants them, right? Just like the guys in "Say Anything" who are so smart about love, but are sitting alone outside the 7/11 on a Friday night by choice.

Full article. Full text: Ironically, the more desperate a "shengnyu" is, probably the more adamant she will be about her standards. For two reasons: 1) Finding the best husband and best life will justify her years of waiting. It will show her parents (and most importantly, herself) that it wasn't that she was single so long because there was something wrong with her, but there was something wrong with all the "inferior" men she was meeting/dating. Self-justification is one of the most powerful sources of self-deception there is. 2) No one wants to be taken advantage of. No woman wants to be seen as desperate. The point of a big diamond (or other jewelry) and flowers and LV/Hermes purses and ostentatious weddings is that a woman feels valued and loved by having someone willing to "waste" money on her. Possibly not every woman feels this way, but it also may be that any woman that doesn't display this tendency has something else going on, like being so hurt/burned previously that all they care about is not getting hurt again, even if it means accepting a lower status in life. IMHO, based on general observation.

You forgot "GLF" and "L1KFB". I got 3 of your references: T, T, CR. Not sure about OCD or 3GD...my wife jokes she has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I don't think that's what you meant. I don't think the US' treatment of its citizens and lawbreakers is unscrutinized by the world at all. Anyone can criticize, because no govt is perfect, no legal system is perfect. The difference is in the US you always have the right to seek redress from the govt. And while the govt can and often does stonewall, Freedom of Information requests are powerful, the checks and balances in our system ensure that one branch of govt can compel cooperation from a stonewalling politician, and the two party system means that eventually someone from the other side is going to challenge or even replace you, and you can never guarantee your secrets can be kept forever. China can't even come close to saying even half those things about their system. Interestingly, my wife's attitude is changing. Not just about China and the US, but about politics. She always used to ignore politics, thought politics was stupid. She couldn't understand why I paid attention. When I explained that my participation in politics will help create a groundswell so that we can keep more of the money we earn, she began to start watching the news more. She got angry at the Chinese govt last night for complaining about the US Embassy releasing air particulate reports. She was upset because if China is embarrassed by those reports, they should clean the air, not "shoot the messenger" (that was a language teaching opportunity!). She was also amused and derisive that the news reports refused to actually name the US as being the nation doing it, as if the criticism was softened by not naming names when everyone knows who it is.

Rgr, good explanation. I have a graphic I found previously that shows the barbarians by direction...I'd upload/display it if I knew how...

FWIW, Chinese don't have separate words for ghosts and demons. I think "demon area" rather than "ghost area" is probably more analogous. Also, I haven't studied the etymology of "lao wai" before. The way I understood it was closer to what they describe here: I'd be interested to hear any different explanation of how the term developed and what it means.

You have to realize, though, Dennis, that most of our others are divorced (and some with children) which makes them less desirable to these men. If they are "desperate", why would they be so picky? My wife said that she had had several marriage proposals after her divorce (and one child), but from what I see here, that's unusual. Absolutely correct. But, do you ever get snide comments from men? Only time I did was while in GZ and those comments came from rural men working in GZ. My thought was then and after reading this article that those men who see us with 'their women' sometimes take it out on us easy targets, regardless whether the woman I am with is a thirty-something divorcee. But again, just a thought... Yeah. My wife agreed with this: Chinese men may not want the divorced women, but they don't want some foreigner taking them, either. Probably not fully thought out, but this is a good example of social normative pressure. If he doesn't want a divorced woman, no one should. If *anyone* wants a divorced woman, then what is to stop his (future?) wife from divorcing him to marry some foreigner. If a divorced woman has zero prospects for remarriage, she is less likely to bail on a marriage, and social order is maintained.

"less" does not mean "zero". No matter how racist you think America is, rest assured: it is worse in almost every nation on this planet. The US is the one place where the majority actually tries to not be racist, think racist thoughts, do racist things. Even if they fail to truly eradicate prejudice. What you describe is identity/grievance politics. Not the same thing at all.

Which is a problem in itself, as all her mainland China friends are wondering why she isn't driving a Lexus and living in a New York Penthouse, like all Americans do. (which is probably their underhanded way of getting even with her for daring to trump them in the face game)

It is beginning to seem like "Foreign Husband" is the new "LV/Hermes purse".

It probably wasn't that the marriage was more important than being together for her...it was that marriage represented the guarantee of future security. I could write books and books and books about what I understand of the female mind, and the way it plays out in Chinese culture (in my opinion, men and women are extremely different in thoughts, emotions, motivations, etc...all women are the same, but the culture a person grows up in filters the way it is expressed...your culture tells you what behavior is acceptable, tells you *how* to achieve what you want). One of the other points about it not being a binary choice is that it isn't just "She loves me and we will be happy forever" or "She is using me and doesn't love me." Love and trust grow over time. Everything you say and do either (and everything she says and does) either increases love and trust, or decreases them. That's why you can get away with arguments and problems in your 40th year of marriage that you can't the day after you met. So if you love her, you should be doing things that show her who you are, that she can trust you to do what you said you will. And you should be looking for indications of her character, her emotional reaction to different things, the way she releases emotional pressure, etc. It's hard, because EVERYONE puts on their best face early in the relationship. Both men and women complain about the things that get dropped after you settle in to the relationship. Women complain about not getting the romance anymore. Men complain about not getting the sexual stuff anymore. (Crudely: I've heard dozens of men repeat this as if it were a fact: "when the marriage starts, the bjs stop") So, basically, women are hypergamous. They want a man who is at least a little bit smarter, taller, more successful, richer. Women also think about a marriage as getting help in life. They want someone to help out around the house, help raise the kids, help earn money for a better life and retirement, take care of the lawn, and squish bugs. Women marry to improve their lot in life. Chinese women marry because there is intense social pressure for them to marry and have children. If a woman makes it to spinster age (35 and unmarried), their mother WILL arrange a marriage for them. My wife had to beg her mom to hold off a year until she saw whether I would follow through on marriage or not. (Her parents love me...in no small part because they are grateful that she found a husband who loves her AND respects them AND supports her putting a high priority on taking care of them). Also for Chinese women, regardless of your financial situation, getting to come to the US fulfills her hypergamous urge. Coming to the US puts her in a top class of Chinese women, better than the hundreds of millions that are stuck in small town, small cities, or the lowest economic rungs of the big cities. (plus, she probably doesn't have the capacity to understand exactly what your financial situation is...we tell them about mortgages and car loans and its almost like they don't hear it, because willingly and unconcernedly carrying debt loads like that don't compute for them...I think it is an instinctual cultural assumption that a Chinese man wouldn't even look for a wife until his debt was gone...this American man is looking for a wife, therefore he must not really have any debt he can't pay off immediately) Because you already talked about marriage so much, when you suddenly started talking about being together and NOT marrying, you damaged the trust. From her perspective, you were not following through on your promises. You showed her you were not trustworthy anymore. Because it isn't a binary choice, and because trust and love build over time, playing games like testing her to find out whether "marriage" or "being together" is more important too often creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The obsession with "red flags" or "warning signs" usually does that. Humans aren't perfect. If you go looking for problems, you'll almost always find them. If you start to suspect her commitment, she'll start to suspect yours, and that never ends well. Most of the trainwrecks of marriage that have been detailed in the breakup/problem section of Candle For Love could have been avoided if there had been more patience and more understanding at a crucial time. The problem is, it is very difficult to identify the crucial time. Most of the trainwrecks occurred years after the wrong choice was made...the problem festered out of sight...by the time it manifested, it was too late. I'm sorry yours fell apart. If you try to get back together, remember that in her mind, this is all your fault for being untrustworthy. You will just about have to crawl across broken glass to get her to trust you again. If you aren't willing to go farther than you think is necessary to convince her of your sincerity, don't even try.

I think Americans don't realize how significantly less racist and more open-minded we are in the US. I know that I'm seen as a big, stinky, dirty, hairy half-ape to most Chinese people. But my wife and in-laws love me anyway. Luckily, I care more about how someone treats me than what they think of me. I use the shock value of my fluency in Chinese to get deals...sometimes better than native Chinese can get...but usually the best I can hope for is just "not much worse".

That's a good question.